How Canada Learning Code Week builds and celebrates galactic-sized impact

In 2022, we took a step back in consideration of what Canada Learning Code Week means to teachers and students around the country. We wondered: if students and teachers all over Canada collaborated to create their own virtual world, what would that impact look like?

Imagine 2,600+ emojis, hand-picked by students from around Canada during Canada Learning Code Week, creating a visual representation of our impact with a fun and expressive connection to how we communicate daily in our digital world. 

During Canada Learning Code Week (December 5 -11, 2022), educators taught lesson plans to unlock Emoji World for their classes to bring to life!

Students got to envision and express themselves using their favourite emojis, representing the galactic-sized impact we can make when we collectively code.

Hundreds of teachers helped equip thousands of students, along with future tech leaders, with the technological skills and competencies they need to solve present-day and future problems. 

Together, we created close to 6,000 meaningful learning experiences in one week!

We can do big things when we do them together

Our world is changing, and like you, we want students in Canada to be ready with the knowledge they need to prosper in our digital world—and to create a better and more inclusive future.

As digital technologies are increasingly embedded in our lives, future generations need to be ready with the technological skills and competencies to solve present-day and future problems. Think: everyone from NASA scientists to project managers to journalists use code in their jobs!

And setting the next generation up with the digital skills they need starts with teachers. That’s a big responsibility.

We often get asked — ‘but who teaches the teachers?’ The good news is we teach teachers to teach (tongue twister!) code throughout the year and provide support during Canada Learning Code Week and beyond. 

With featured lesson plans, workshops designed specifically for teachers and resources delivered right to their inboxes, educators from all disciplines were set up for success. Did we mention all of these resources are free?

How, you ask? We’re a national charity and rely on the generosity and support of donors to ensure we can continue to offer our programs to people around Canada at no cost or at a small cost. Our donors and partners enable us to ensure that our workshops, like Canada Learning Code Week, are accessible and that we are delivering meaningful learning experiences that enable learners to become creators of technology. 

Thank you to our Presenting Sponsors

All of us at Canada Learning Code send a heartfelt thank you to our awesome partners who helped make Canada Learning Code Week 2022 out-of-this-world: Amazon Future Engineer and the Government of Canada. Their generous support made it possible to immerse educators in computer science during this special week. Thank you!

This type of funding enables Canada Learning Code to empower teachers of all coding skill levels, especially absolute beginners, who have coding in their curriculum or want to add creativity and computer science to their classrooms. Or teachers just looking to integrate coding into existing subjects and join in the coding fun! AND IT IS FUN.

Even though computer science can feel intimidating, out of reach, or challenging, we want learners to realize that there is nothing they can’t do — teachers included, and we’re here to help.

Take Jess Duarte, the web developer who built Emoji World from scratch. Jess’s love for coding was sparked by a Ladies Learning Code workshop that led her to eventually start her own web development business.

“Building Emoji World was challenging and magical. I loved seeing it come to life when I built it but more than anything, I loved watching it grow as new coders across the country added emojis to it. Each emoji meant that one more person was learning how to solve problems using one of the most powerful tools on Earth: code. And that’s when the real collective impact of learning to code comes to light: when as a society, we’re better equipped to solve the most challenging problems we face with the help of computers and a thinking process that makes large challenges possible to tackle, one step at a time.”

— Jess Duarte, Web Developer

We’re in this together. We can do great, big, out-of-this-world things when we know how to code.

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